Stop. Think. The US is "the world leader" in ONLY one thing...

Can you figure it out?

At what, exactly, is the US the world's leader?

There's only one thing.

Its not education.
Its not physical health.
Its not mental health.
Its not literacy.
Its not infant mortality.
Its not free media.
Its not basketball or soccer, and the rest don't count because nearly no one else plays our stuff.
Its not the exploration of space.
Its not removing poverty.
Its not providing justice.
Hell, its not roads or mass transit.
Its not even the most free economic markets.

There's only one thing.
Well, one and a half things, but the half doesn't count (more on that later)...

I'll give you one guess: what is the Bush administration getting ready to do?

After you think about it, isn't Ashcroft taking away, in FEAR, those few things we had left which, in a mythical sense, we clung to to say "This is the greatest nation on earth?"

Help me out here.
At what is the US #1?

 

No; only a put-down of the notion that we are "the world's greatest nation." We are not. We contribute to the world in unique ways, but there are alot of other nations who provide for their citizens MUCH better than we do. There are LOADS of citizens who fought, and fight, for America NOT for what it is, but for what it might be. MAny feel America is in the process of becoming; I'm one of those many, and want to shine light on how far we have to go. Lots of people, because they are their daddy made chunks of change in the 80s and 90s, both think that America is already nation-state in end-state, that there is no more "growing" to do, AND think that money is a real measure instead of a tool, that money means anything without personal power, honor in what you do, and dignity.

Are you offering me low-hanging fruit, or what? I'll put it to you this way. My father was in charge of Internal School Security at the Board of Ed in Philly (when it was called that). He took me over to Stetson Junior High one day, so I could see the difference between the education he struggled to pay for, for me, and "inner-city" public education.

At Stetson, there were, in the classrooms I saw, abot 36-40 kids, about 23-30 desks, and about 18-20 books for each child. Some books, as my dad showed me, said things like "Nelson Mandela died in jail." NTAs, or Non-teaching Assistant, ran classrooms instead of certified teachers...it was ************ing chaos.

Needless to say, that was just one of many examples of how we FAIL every single day at education, it illuminates the effect of poverty, and speaks to much of what I submitted above. If you "love" America, how can you tolerate ANY of its citizens going through any of that, EVER? How can the goal NOT be much higher, much more...human? My problem is that it seems our goals are high for ourselves, and low for our ability to activate our citizenship.

TEST: I challenge you to be honest, and name all your elected representatives, from your local ones, on up, from memory. I damn near guarantee that you can't, and if you can, you are among the less than one half of one percent who can, and most of them work in Washington and its part of the job description. What kind of nation is it when most people cannot name their representatives? I think that the only thing that saves us is the "idea" of America, 'cause when you actualyl look at the institutions, they don't work for the benefit of all, just for the benefit of a few. I can't name one institution that benefits people as we currently "envision" it, can you?

I mean, we ARGUE in America about getting the homeless of the streets, making O'reilly-esque statements like "well, some of them WANT to freeze out there, so let 'em. Don't spend my tax money on those lazy people." Scotland, divisible from the UK on this matter of "sleeping rough," STARTS OFF with the premise that no one should EVER be living like that. That's where they start. When I was there in January the discussion was at another level fro the one in America entirely; it was about whether domicile support should come mainly in the form individual units, or community homes, and the benefits and negatives, from the "homeless" person's perspective as well; these "lazy" folks seemed far more empoweredt han our lot, but maybe its me.

For me, the level of humanity at which we - Americans - begin discussions like these lies in direct juxtaposition to both our economic system of choice and our claims on world leadership. The thing that consistently disappoints me in this country is that we begin our discussions about the above issues at a much lower level of citizen compassion, as a rule, in the public discourse, than any other Western nation, not to mention actual citizen engagement.

You talk about jail...come on. We jail more folks than any other "Western" nation, and we have more people in our justice system than any other. We claim our sentencing structure, inclusive of the death penalty, as deterrant in nature, and we still lead the world in murders by guns. We do not educate our young people, they are, many of them, illiterate, and the above post, in your sarcasm, is far too close to a manifest truth for us to be thumping our chest just yet...there is SO much work to do.

Most of our citizens? The answer would HAVE to be "No."

The questions are: What is the standard at which we should feel comfortable propagating the American "way of life" to others as something to emulate? When do we begin to say that sending Joe Millionaire abroad is less important then getting ahead of Cuba (CUBA!) in sending doctors to the third world? When do we begin to look at immigration rates to the US as a clear failure of our foreign policy? When do we begin to see fixing our 17th in Math, 36th in Science - worldwide - ranking as something that must be addressed IMMEDIATELY?

When do we stop sitting in front of the TV patting ourselves on the back and be about the REAL business, the real responsibility of each generation, of nation-building?

Forget nation-building in Iraq until we've built a working nation in the US.

Don't let your wanna-be status (you know, that intangible thing the middle-class chases after, that desire not to make a nation that works for most or even all, but rather to "escape" to another class where one doesn't have to worry about it... the wanna-be upper class sensibility) prevent you from acting on your own behalf right now.

To be #1 only at ways and means to kill, invade, and occupy is to be #1 at very little. Empires fall. the question is, given our human infrastructure, how far will we fall when it comes time to give up the ghost? Will it be a little bump, a la the UK, or will it be a plummet, a la Rome, Persia, etc....?

 

Sorry, as a Dallas Cowboys ultra, I can now quote Parcells as saying:

"You are what your record SAYS you are."

Right now, we are losers at one of the only two international basketball tournaments that matter, and the most recent one at that. Period. We are NOT #1. Or #2. Or #3.

 

see here, here, AND here.

Can you ARGUE that the US is #1 at circling the globe and putting up sats? Maybe. But the Russians' focus is exploring space; we spend 408 BILLION dollars a year on "defense." And cry when we have to spend $7 billion ONCE to put Hubble up to see the beginnings of the universe...

We are #1 at one thing, and one thing only...

 

Re: Re: Re: Stop. Think. The US is "the world leader" in ONLY one thing...

Okay, okay. I'll give you immigrants (although should we be proud of that anymore?), and I'll give you women's tennis.

But unless you are talking about films as "units," as, like, widgets, I would submit that we are NOT #1 at producing films.

If you want "#1 at producing shit that gets projected in movie-houses," I'll give you that, but not #1 at producing film. Europe crushes us at that, and even "profound" American films are often produced with European $$$$$....